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Geography of Sunset Park
Sunset Park, located between Park Slope and Bay Ridge, is roughly the area between 1st and 8th Avenues and 65th Street and the Prospect Expressway. You will not get shot in Sunset Park. If you're unfamiliar with Brooklyn neighborhoods (or the city in general) a really great site is NabeWise. You can find general overviews, photos, and statistics for literally every neighborhood in NYC, as well as reviews written by their residents. Demographics To borrow heavily from Wikipedia (Creative Commons baby), the basic demographics of the neighborhood are as follows: : There were 29,723 total housing units, of which 95.8% were occupied, and 75.1% were rented and 24.9% were owned; The median property value was $235,400. The median household income in 1999 US dollars was $30,152, and the median family income was $31,247; The per capita income was $13,141; 27.9% of individuals, and 26% of families were living below the poverty line. 93.9% of residents were of one race, while 6.1% were multiracial; Roughly 42.6% of residents were White, 36.2% were Black or African American, 3.2% were Hispanic or Latino, 29% were Asian, and 14.7% were of two or more races. (source) Many residents are monolingual in Spanish or a Chinese dialect, and many more have very limited English at best. Having a basic understanding of one or more of the languages spoken in the neighborhood is extraordinarily helpful in engaging the community, plus it sometimes helps you get better food/service at restaurants. Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is generally considered the primary restaurant and business street, and up and down it you'll find about the greatest variety of Latin American cuisines you'll find anywhere in the northeastern United States. Seriously, there are speciality restaurants focusing not just on national cuisines, they're getting into the nitty-gritty differences of foods in different states in Mexico. It's awesome. Eighth Avenue/Chinatown Brooklyn Chinatown started in the late 80s as just an exclave of the more famous and older Chinatown in Manhattan, but has managed to develop its own character through immigration from different parts of China than those that originally settled in Manhattan (northern China, Fuzhou, and Wenzhou, as opposed to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Taishan) as well as from other East and Southeast Asian countries. Its culinary and shopping options are enormously diverse and cover a wide variety countries beyond China, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Turkey. Parks! Parks are free! The eponymous park after which our fair neighborhood is named is located between 41st and 44th Streets and 5th and 7th Avenues and is kind of hard to miss if you just walk down any of those roads. Though in some ways it's just a run-of-the-mill green space, it's one of the highest points in Brooklyn and has spectacular views of Manhattan and the water. Green-Wood Cemetery is bit further north (the 25th Street stop on the R will take you the main entrance) and is the actual highest point in the borough, though its views are not as great due to tree obstruction. However, its enormous size and notably calm resident population makes it one of the quietest places you're going to find anywhere in the city, so keep that in mind for when you just can't take the hustle and bustle of 5th Avenue anymore and would rather commune with the likes of Leonard Bernstein and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Farther south in Sunset Park, you're just a short walk from Owl's Head Park in Bay Ridge, a peaceful, hilly park tucked away on Shore Parkway. Also check out Shore Road Park, with great views of the Verrazano Bridge plus running and biking paths. Within this park there's small botanical garden-- with a turtle sanctuary! Just another few blocks down is the 69th St. Pier, where you can watch pre-ooze Bebop and Rocksteady catch and bring home fish to (mind-bogglingly) eat. If you are lucky, you might spy an Upstate New Yorker in their native habitat: reclining in Adirondack chair.